He had, indeed, before that, sought gradually to prepare them for what was to happen on the morrow's night. He had pointed to it in dim figure at the very opening of His Ministry, on the first occasion that he had taught in the Temple, [5551] as well as to Nicodemus. [5552] He had hinted it, when He spoke of the deep sorrow when the Bridegroom would be taken from them, [5553] of the need of taking up His cross, [5554] of the fulfilment in Him of the Jonah-type, [5555] of His Flesh which He would give for the life of the world, [5556] as well as in what might have seemed the Parabolic teaching about the Good Shepherd, Who laid down His life for the Sheep, [5557] and the Heir Whom the evil husbandmen cast out and killed. [5558] But He had also spoken of it quite directly - and this, let us specially notice, always when some highpoint in His History had been reached, and the disciples might have been carried away into Messianic expectations of an exaltation without humiliation, a triumph not a sacrifice. We remember, that the first occasion on which He spoke thus clearly was immediately after that confession of Peter, which laid the foundation of the Church, against which the gates of hell should not prevail; [5559] the next, after descending from the Mount of Transfiguration; [5560] the last, on preparing to make His triumphal Messianic Entry into Jerusalem. [5561] The darker hints and Parabolic sayings might have been misunderstood. Even as regarded the clear prediction of His Death, preconceived ideas could find no room for such a fact. Deep veneration, which could not associate it with His Person, and love which could not bear the thought of it, might, after the first shock of the words was past, and their immediate fulfilment did not follow, suggest some other possible explanation of the prediction. But on that Wednessday it was impossible to misunderstand; it could scarcely have been possible to doubt what Jesus said of His near Crucifixion. [5562] If illusions had still existed, the last two days must have rudely dispelled them. The triumphal Hosannas of His Entry into the City, and the acclamations in the Temple, had given place to the cavils of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes, and with a Woe' upon it Jesus had taken His last departure from Israel's sanctuary. And better far than those rulers, whom conscience made cowards, did the disciples know how little reliance could be placed on the adherence of the multitude.' And now the Master was telling it to them in plain words; was camly contemplating it, and that not as in the dim future, but in the immediate present - at that very Passover, from which scarcely two days separated them. Much as we wonder at their brief scattering on His arrest and condemnation, those humble disciples must have loved Him much to sit around Him in mournful silence as He thus spake, and to follow Him unto His Dying.
But to one of them, in whose heart the darkness had long been gathering, this was the decisive moment. The prediction of Christ, which Judas as well as the others must have felt to be true, extinguished the last glimmering of such light of Christ as his soul had been capable of receiving. In its place flared up the lurid flame of hell. By the open door out of which he had thrust the dying Christ Satan entered into Judas.' [5563] Yet, even so, not permanently. [5564] It may, indeed, be doubted, whether, since God is in Christ, such can ever be the case in any human soul, at least on this side eternity. Since our world's night has been lit up by the promise from Paradise, the rosy hue of its morning has lain on the edge of the horizon, deepening into gold, brightening into day, growing into midday-strength and evening-glory. Since God's Voice wakened earth by its early Christmas-Hymn, it has never been quite night there, nor can it ever be quite night in any human soul. [5565]